U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten at a March for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples in Grand Rapids, Michigan on May 3, 2024. (Photo: Anna Liz Nichols)
Content warning: This story contains details of the sexual abuse of children and suicide.
Children are facing a new and growing threat to their safety from organizations engaging in terrorism by extracting sexually explicit materials with the end goal of collapsing government and society, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten said during a news conference alongside national security experts following the sentencing of a Michigan man connected to one such group on Thursday.
It’s not common procedure to hold a news conference after the sentencing of child exploitation cases, Totten said at the start of the news conference with reporters, but due to the reach of violence online sexual extortion or “sextortion” of children has in the United States, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation wanted to call attention to the violence.
“It is difficult to even comprehend such shocking and inhumane violence targeted at innocent and vulnerable children, but we cannot look away,” National Security Division Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen said during the news conference.
Earlier on Thursday, Northern Michigan resident Richard Anthony Reyna Densmore, 47, was sentenced in federal court to 30 years in prison for sexually exploiting a child on social platform Discord.
Prosecutors in the case presented that Densmore in October 2022 manipulated a minor girl into sending a nude video of herself with his username “Rabid” written on her chest.
Densmore is a part of a dangerous network of violent extremists known as “764,” Olsen said. In fact, Densmore had achieved infamy in 764, which extorts children into recording acts of self harm or providing sexually explicit materials with the end goal of forcing children to kill themselves on livestream for the entertainment of members of 764.
The FBI has issued warnings about 764 and other similar groups that target children on online platforms, Olsen said, and local and national partners in national security are increasingly interested in warning parents about the existence of groups committing terrorism.
“These groups often target young people struggling with mental health issues, as alleged, the defendant in this case, Richard Densmore ran chat rooms and Discord servers that facilitated the exchange of Sexual Child Sexual Abuse material,” Olsen said. “He forced children to cut themselves and to produce graphic material and now he is being held accountable for his crimes. Today’s sentence of 30 years in prison underscores the Department of Justice’s commitment to stopping acts of terrorism and disrupting the online groups who engage in this abhorrent behavior, and they show our resolve to bring every available tool to bear in countering these threats.”
Sextortion can occur anywhere online, said FBI Detroit’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge Rebecca Marriott. There’s an illusion that it takes a long period of time to manipulate someone using sextortion, but really it can take as little as minutes or hours.
That was the case with Marquette-area 17-year-old Jordan DeMay in March of 2022. DeMay had thought he was messaging a young woman on Instagram when in reality foreign scammers had manipulated him into sending an explicit photograph and then attempted to blackmail him for money.
Within six hours from the start of the conversations with the scammers, DeMay killed himself.
The case radiated through the northern Michigan community, local law enforcement of government officials said during a news conference talking about legislation aimed to curb sextortion in September.
“One case is too many. One family grieving is too many,” state Rep. Jen Hill (D-Marquette) said at the September news conference. “We have to act now to protect our children, to prevent more heartbreak and to make sure that no more families are going to go through this heartbreak.”
Michigan law enforcement officials outlined at the September news conference how sextortion has impacted children in their communities, noting the problem is growing in the state.
Marquette County Sheriff Gregory Zyburt said in September that what happened to DeMay will stick with him forever and he wants kids to know that if they are ever in a similar position where someone is threatening them with an explicit photo that “the world won’t end and it’s not worth taking their own life.”
Marriott noted on Thursday that the FBI wants parents to know the dangers kids may face from predators online, to talk with their kids about who they’re talking to online and look out for signs of mental distress.
But there’s interest from federal agencies to talk about groups like 764 because what they’re doing isn’t necessarily rooted in blackmail for money, Totten said, but rather has political roots.
Totten did not expand on what the ideologies were of groups like 764 were outside of the destruction of society, but members of 764 have also been connected to the Order of Nine Angles, a Satanist neo-Nazi group which encourages pedophilia as a way to break down civilization.
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